The Mysterious Moodus Noises of Connecticut

The mysterious Moodus noises in south central Connecticut for many years frightened the Puritan settlers.

They weren’t alone. The Wangunk Indians had told the colonists of the fearful noises that they tried to appease. In fact, the Indians called the land around Mt. Tom “Machemoodus,” meaning place of bad noises. The settlers shortened the name to Moodus, now a village in East Haddam.

Today, people can still hear the strange Moodus noises, though they don't pack the same terrifying punch they did in days of yore.

Origin of the Moodus noises: Mt. Tom at the intersection of the Connecticut and Salmon rivers.

Moodus Noises

The Moodus Noises seemed to come from underground. Sometimes they sounded like thunder, sometimes like pistol shots. Sometimes they disappeared for years, then they’d return furiously.

The Puritans, of course, thought their angry God caused the Moodus noises. They first recorded hearing the noises in 1702.

In 1729, the Rev. Stephen Hosmer of East Haddam, Conn., wrote a letter to a friend in Boston referring to 'fearful and dreadful' sounds that frightened local residents.

Stephen Hosmer

Hosmer believed "God almighty is to be seen and trembled at, in what has been often heard among us."

The Indians had a somewhat different take on the noises, wrote Hosmer. An old Indian said the Indian’s god was very angry that the Englishman’s god had come here.

"I have myself heard eight or ten sounds successively, and imitating small arms, in the space of five minutes," he wrote. "I have, I suppose, heard several hundreds of them within twenty years; some more, some less terrible. Sometimes we have heard them almost every day, and great numbers of them in the space of a year. Oftentimes I have observed them coming down from the north, imitating slow thunder, which shakes the houses and all that is in them."

Others had more scientific explanations. One colonist thought a tunnel linked the mountain to the sea and it carried wind and tidal sounds. Some thought underground explosions of gases caused the terrifying noises..

Steele said a great fossil called a carbuncle in the bowels of the earth caused the noises. He said his magic could remove the carbuncle and stop them. Steele then moved into a blacksmith's shop, covered the windows and doors and at night worked in secrecy. One night the people of Moodus saw a cloud of smoke, flame and sparks coming from the blacksmith shop and concluded Steele was coming up with the carbuncle.

Eventually, Dr. Steele told the people of Moodus he had removed the great carbuncle, but he had discovered a smaller carbuncle that would cause more noises. They wouldn’t be as awful, however, as the noise caused by the large carbuncle. Then he disappeared.

Tremors continued for several days, and on May 18, "the concussion of the earth, and the roaring of the atmosphere, were most tremendous. Consternation and dread filled every house. Chimneys toppled, stone walls fell and rocks of several tons moved."

In 1929, horror writer H.P. Lovecraft used the Moodus noises for the basis of his short story, The Dunwich Horror.